Tag Archives: Camille Flammarion

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This book was first translated into English and published in about 1904, whilst it was originally published in French with a title that would translate to Astronomy for Women.

I started reading this book on a particularly hot and sunny day while showing the Sun to passers-by through a H-alpha telescope. I just really wanted something to do while there wasn’t anyone around, and I couldn’t really just stand in the scorching Sun and observe it for hours.

Astronomy for Amateurs talks about pretty much everything that you’d need to know when first dipping your toes into stargazing – what are constellations, how to find a specific one, how to find the planets, how do they look like, when to expect a meteor shower, what comets are, etc.

All of it is written (and translated) with a beautiful style that at first did seem a bit patronizing and strangely pointed – Flammarion starts out with a long tirade about female astronomers and their exploits and with telling how the young mothers should guide their children’s interest towards astronomy and that there’s nothing difficult in it. – That was all quite baffling until I got to the note that said that the original work was titled Astronomy for Women.

Well it was the beginning of 20th century, so it’s quite an achievement in itself that there was a book aimed towards women.

As for the actual information that you can get from the book – there are obviously some things that are outdated, but it’s not the majority of the work, but rather just bits and pieces – the basics (distances to planets and their sized for example) are mostly correct, although there’s the occasional bit where he writes that the largest object between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is just about 100km in circumference, whilst Ceres in reality is about ten times that.

I liked the experience of reading it, even though some things were just plain funny – like Flammarion’s description of Lunar craters as volcanic craters (there are some volcanic features on the Moon, but most of the craters are impact craters from meteorite collisions), and how the Sun gets its energy.

If you’re interested in the level of knowledge and the style of a popular science guide book of ca 1900, it’s a good choice for reading. But if you’re just wanting to know more about astronomy – choose something a bit more current.